Penmanship
by Naya Zephronic
Summary: What does a little Dalish elf have need for penmanship? Zevran's thoughts as the Dalish Warden learns to write her name, introspective confusions from the assassin. Set just before landsmeet. One-shot.


She wields words with the same finesse as her daggers. I have seen her slice through knights and lords with the same skill she would clean a hare. I have seen her slip though better judgment and defensives as easily as I myself would slip a knife through a heart. Were as I do this with blades, she uses only her words.

Such power to be held in a little Dalish elf. She is a slip of a thing, hardly noticed when she wants to be, as large as a dragon when she needs to and this is only her words. She calls us _mavhen_, her people and I dare say she has us all trained, even the Qunari, Sten will lift his head to attention when she cuts with her words. When she glides her words across her tongue, we all know there will be a fight. When her words are light as air and she bumbles on in nonsense, we know she has her task well in hand. We relax as her quarry is confused.

She is a master of words in all forms, except one.

For what does a little Dalish elf have need for penmanship? She can read just fine, her eyes glide over expertly written text, hardly seeing, she knows what those words will say. She speaks with the eloquence of kings; these things are not beyond her, words are another weapon to her and she is a master.

But the quill in her hand fumbles from her grip.

The quill is nothing like the pummel of a dagger. She knows not how to hold it. She struggles to keep it still; to keep its feathered end from flipping backwards in her grasp. Her small hands are strong; they push too hard and crack the stem. This is not the first.

Her face is marred with shame as she leans back. She does not look at me; she knows I've been there, but only because I didn't care for her not to know. "What they must think of me," She sighs, her shoulders slumping. "A savage with no civility. A wild elf in need of taming."

I drift to her side, called by the humiliation in her voice. She is proud to be Dalish; she reminds us all constantly that she is. We forget, I forget, sometimes. She takes command, leads us to and fro across this dog's land, gathers an army and we, I forget that she is a little Dalish from a small tribe who until a few months ago could count the humans she'd met on one hand.

"The Arl forgets sometimes." She adds, reading my thoughts without realizing. "I see it in his face when it comes back to him. The moment when he thinks _I'm talking to an elf_, He tries to hide it, but I see it." I sit beside her and she leans on my arm. I let her because there is pleasure for her in this, and I refuse to be the only one who takes pleasures. She is such an innocent thing though; my company is pleasure enough for her, sometimes.

"It's the shock on his face I see, when I amaze him with a small word and he remembers that an elf said that." She goes on, flicking the broken quill with her finger and not caring that she splatters ink across the table. "What would he think, what would they think if they knew I couldn't write?"

"Is this so necessary?" I asked, surely there are others whom she can dictate to and I say as much.

"The Arl wants me to sign documents as if I'm a lordling; I need a reason to be present at the landsmeet he says." She laughs a bitter sound that I wish I had not heard. For once her Dalish pride is gone, replaced with shame because what wild elf needs to write their name? But now she does at it pains her to be weak in the face of these humans. I know this, and she does not have to tell me, but she does. "These human lords will eat me alive if they knew I can't write my _own name_." The words are bitter again, I do not like the sound.

"Cara," I mumble, the word coming too easy to my lips. She has always been _dear_, my dear warden I would call her, dear Lyna, but never _cara¸_ never the word in my Antivan tongue. I cannot wonder why I have done so this time, it has eased her torment some and I find I cannot complain. "It is nothing that cannot be achieved with a bit of practice."

I rise before she can comment, fetching her a new quill because she does not want to be seen getting yet another for herself. She does not need to ask and she is grateful when I return to sit with her again. I forget how young she is, so few times there is when she reminds me. I wonder what I would think of her, had I happened upon her months before, somehow, before she became a warden.

I show her gently how to hold the quill without it snapping.

Would she fascinate me then as she does now? I doubt this, what use would a Dalish elf need such mastery over words in a small clan in the forest? If her words are something she'd only learned recently, then I am sure she can master a quill just as quickly. With my voice in her ear, she starches out her name on the vellum. Her hand aches, and she stops to rub it, unused to using it in such a way. A hundred, a thousand times her name is written and it slowly flows from a child's print to a more confident script as the quill settles in her hand.

Maybe she would, still, interest me. Maybe I would have cared to remain with her clan for a time, because it was never just her words that had me turning her way. Her eyes held a fire, and I try hard not to compare them to someone else, and her kindness was a novelty I was not used to seeing. The Dalish in Antiva are not as she, and even the clan in the Ferelden forest were far less volatile. I doubt it would last, however, the crows or my own actions would cause me to leave.

She pauses a moment to let the ink dry before flipping the vellum over and continuing. From the first to the last the grace of her lines has improved, but she is not happy with improvement.

For once she is afraid of what humans think of her. For once she is unsure what is enough, what will pass under others eyes without scrutiny. A meeting of lords is no place for a little Dalish elf fresh out of the woods, but she has no choice. I realize this as she stops more and more to rub her wrist. If there was another she could pass this task off to she would, but Alistair the only other Grey Warden has slumped all the weight onto her shoulders. He is a coward; can he not see that even she has her limits? He is the one who should be paraded about in the landsmeet; it is his noble blood that the arl is counting on.

Only I know that she will not push Alistair to the throne, she could not, she says, he doesn't want it and if it were her, she wouldn't wish for it either. It is for him that she does this. She is under the thumb of the Arl and the lords of the landsmeet because she is too kind and now she must suffer for it. Too kind.

I kiss her temple as she writes.

I've not realized I've done this at first. Ours is not a relationship of sweet gestures, though this is surely one. I've let her lean on me or take my hand in the past as we sit by the fire only because these are the pleasures she wishes for and I even I have conscious enough to let her have them. I've surely never done so without her prompting. She knows this and I can only hope in vain that she did not notice.

Of course she did. Not at first, but the scratching of her quill slowed then stop and her gaze turned to me. I have to hide my unrest, because she can read me if I let her, and she finds words in faces as easily in books. I smirk, let it be boredom and desire she sees, not my own confusion echoed in her eyes. "My dear warden," I say softly, not the Antivan word, though it sits on the edge of my lips threatening me. "You could use some rest, no? The landsmeet is not for another few days, you have time to practice."

She smiles for me, and I'm reminded again how young she is.

I kiss her lips this time, my arm around her waist and pull her away from the writing table. I lead her across the estate to the room given to her by the Arl, and damn any who stare at us too long as we cross. I take pleasure in her body and light fires of it across her skin with my touch. She whimpers my name like the sweetest music as I show her something I've not done with her before, but have done a hundred times to others. She does not mind that she is just the latest name in a long list of partners for me and this is something that digs into me. This cannot be a Dalish trait, I think, but it is. She says it to herself all the time; bend, do not break.

I cannot understand the depths of her acceptance.

I lay with her after she'd fallen asleep. It was a habit I couldn't seem to break. It began in camp where setting up another tent was wasteful when I'd begun spending so much time in hers. Orzammar had left her in panic with the thought of a mountain above her head to the point where her breath had left her lungs and we were all afraid to leave her be in the night and so I stayed then too. Now, here in Denerim she cannot sleep for fear of falling down into the deep roads, a lasting vestige of that dark place forever in her mind. Unless of course, I do for her what I did then and hold her close.

But this night I cannot stay. My mind is not my own, my actions that of a stranger and I need peace to sort it out. I cannot think with her so close. Time, I just need some time.

I hope she will understand.

* * *

_I hope I did Zevran justice, It didn't start out in his point of view, but half way though the 'He's turned to 'I's and I had to go back and fix all the tenses after that. Sorry if I missed a few in there somewhere. This is probably before the fight with Taliesen, but I think it could go either way. _


End file.
